Jean Elie the 1st
Denis de Trobriand, born in 1664 and dead in 1725,
has got from his two marriages, six children. His second
wife, Marguerite Le Dizes, gave birth, in 1713, a son
Paul Francois Denis, lord of Kerescot de Talargas,
Infantry captain (he fighted in the french Army at the
battle of Fontenoy), who was the father of Judith Denis
de Kerescot, later wife of Rene du Laurens de la Barre.

From his first marriage
with Fiacrette Le Lonze, Jean Elie Denis had five
children :four sons, Jean Etienne, Jean Elie the 2nd,
Jean Marie, lord of Villeneuve and Alexandre, knight of
Trobriand, and a daughter, Agnes, lady du Rest.

Jean Etienne Denis
de Trobriand, born in 1696 and dead in 1735, has been
the root of the Trobriand elder branch. He was lord of
the Cosquerou de Talargas and married Elisabeth de Suase
de Kervegan. His son , Jean Francois Sylvestre,
born in 1729, has been the first Count of Trobriand. His
daughter Jeanne Apolline (1733-1764) has been a nun in
the Ursulines convent of Morlaix.

From the
marriage of Jean François Sylvestre Denis de
Trobriand with Emmanuelle Drouet de la Villehaye
(dead in 1793) have born two sons and two daughters.
Among them, Françoise who married the viscount of
dAuxay and Jeanne, wife of the Lieutenant-Commander
de Rennes du Manoir. The elder son, Jean
Joseph Sylvestre, born in Cosquerou (Finistere) the 7th
of June 1765. From 1791 to 1793 he was Lieutenant on
the ship L'Esperance, under the command of Bruni
d'Entrecasteaux and Huon de Kermadec, during the
expedition sent by the king Louis XVI to research the
remains of the La Perouse expedition lost in the Pacific
Islands.Commander in 1797, he took under command the
vessel La Vestale and sailed to Saint Domingue
where he died the 16th of March 179, poisoned by order of
Toussaint-Louverture. He had married in Holland, in 1795,
with Agathe Du Parc de Locmaria but he did not leave any
descendance.

His brother, François
EmmanuelDenis, count
of Trobriand, was born in Ploujean during the year
1773. In 1788, he was page of Monsieur ( the Count of
Provence who became later the king Louis XVIII) and
married his cousin Melanie, daughter of the Count Jacques
Guenole Denis de Keredern de Trobriand. Having resigned
from the Navy in 1801, he became Shore Inspector in
Morlaix and died in 1822. His son, Erasme Sylvestre Joseph
Charles
(1808-1848) retired from the rank of Lieutenant-Commander
in 1833. From his cousin Lucile de Rennes du Manoir, he
has got in 1838 a son, Alphée,
comte Denis de Trobriand, who has been the last male
representative of the lineage, as his son Henri was dead
at sea without descendance. The brother of Alphee, Erasme,
was captain in the Marine Infantry and died also without
descendance. Their sister, Lucile, was the wife of
Edward Wetch, from an old scottish family.

The second son of
Jean Elie the 1st, born in Ploujean the 11th of October
1703 and named Jean Elie the 2nd Denis, lord of
Keredern de Trobriand, gave rise to the Keredern
branch of the Denis family. He married twice. His first
wife Vincente Roulin was the mother of Jean
François Denis de Keredern de Trobriand, lord of Morizur, born the 29th
of January 1730. He was Commander in the Royal Navy and
finished his career as a Commodore and knight of the
Saint Louis cross. He is dead in Brest the 18th of
February 1780, without descendance of his marrieage with
Genevieve Poissonnier des Perrieres.

Jean
François Denis de Keredern de Trobriand

1730-1780

His brother, from the
same mother, Jacques Guénolé Denis de Keredern de
Trobriand, born in Plouigneau the 26th of september
1733, dead the 29th of July 1798, married the 30th of
January 1760 Jeanne Charlotte Abyven de Kereoc,
and is the origin of the B branch of the Keredern family.
This branch is the only one, today, still represented by
a male descendancy.

The third son of Jean
Elie the 2nd, born the 26th of April 1741 in Plouigneau
from his second marriege with Francoise Corentine Le
Taouec, was Francois Marie the 1st Denis de
Keredern, knight of Trobriand. In 1768, in La
Habana (Cuba), he married Anna Maria Teresa de
Massa y Leunda y Aristiguieta, the daughter of a
civilian high-officer of Caracas (Venezuela). They reared
six children whose three sons have had an exemplary
destiny and a daughter a well filled up life. The
descendancy of this family, now extincted in the male
lineage, is still well represented by some families
descending of women. Several biographical notices
describe the details of the adventurous, and often
glorious, life of some of these men and women of the Denis
de Keredern de Trobriand family.

The descendants of François
Marie 1st Denis

de Keredern de Trobriand

The knight François
Marie 1er Denis de Keredern de
Trobriand was implicated, in 1764, in the revolt of
the Parliament of Britany against the Duke d'Aiguillon.
He was banished and gone to Spain where he enlisted in
the Navy. Sent to Spanish America, he became acquainted
with the daughter of an high-officer of Caracas
(Venezuela),Anna Maria Teresa de Massay Leunda
y Aristiguieta, born in the province of Pampeluna
(Spain) in the little port of San Juan de Pasajes. He
married her in La Habana (Cuba) the 30th of June 1768.
The family of Anna Maria was akin to that of Simon
Bolivar "el libertador" through the
branch Aristiguieta. The first son of the just
married, François Marie II, is born in Plouigneau
(Finistère) the following year (1769), after the return
in France of Francois Marie the 1st. He was then posted
to the coastal defence of the Tregor, at first in
Lezardrieux, then in Pleubian. Here, in these little
breton towns of the Côtes du Nord, are born his
five other children, Joseph Vincent, Jacques Pierre
Romain, LouiseJeanne Nicole (called Fanny),
Renée ( called Rose) and Hilarie.
He is dead the 30th of December 1810.

François
Marie 1st Denis de Keredern de Trobriand and his daughter Fanny

(tapestry
inlaid with ivory miniatures painted by Isabey)(Collection de Trobriand)

His elder son, François
Marie II Denis de Keredern de Trobriand, born in Plouigneau the
30th of August 1769, conformed to the familial tradition
and served in the Navy. During the year 1808, he was
Commander on the frigatewho belonged to the
naval division under command of the Vice-Admiral Hamelin
whose colours were displayed on the Venus.
Sailing from Cherbourg on the 10th of November 1808,
together with the frigate La Junon and the two
brigs Le Cygne and Le Papillon, he ran
the blockade of the port of Fort-de-France (La
Martinique). He was killed in action the 14th of February
1809 during a struggle with the english navy for the
defence of Fort-Desaix, at the entrance of the Carenage
Bay. His ship, the 40-guns frigate L'Amphitrite,
has been destroyed and sent to the bottom in the
Carenage Bay of Fort-de-France. Today, the name of the
Captain de Trobriand is always attributed to a stair of
Fort Saint Louis.

From his marriage with Aimée
Adélaïde Boucault de Mélient de Rochedu, François
Marie II had a son, Jean Marie Antoine
Adolphe, count of Trobriand, artillery captain, born
in Morlaix the 12th of June 1808 and dead in Tours in
1874, married with Adélaïde Marie de la
Rochefoucauld-Bayers, and a daughter, Mathilde,
wife of Aimé Huchet de Cintré. Both children are
dead without descendance.

The second son of
Francois Marie the 1st, Joseph
Vincent Denis de Keredern de Trobriand, was born in Lézardrieux
(Côtes du Nord) the 23rd of January 1773. During the
french Revolution, he was faithful to the king and he
emigrated and took service in the Princes' Army in the
service of the Austrian emperor. He has been from all the
struggles against France but, after the battle of
Austerlitz, he took an oath to the Emperor Napoleon. He
was then allowed, in 1806, to enter, as a captain, in the
Regiment of La Tour d'Auvergne. At the end of the
napoleonic wars, he was Colonel and Empire Baron. The
10th of March 1815, he received patent letters of
Hereditary Baron and he was Officer of the Legion
d'Honneur. After the restoration of the monarchy, he
received the rank of knight of Saint Louis and finished
his career as a Field Marshal in 1825. He had married,
the 10th of May 1815 in Tours, Jeanne RoseHachin
de Courbeville (dead in 1832), daughter of Pierre
Jacques Hachin de Courbeville, Councellor near the Upper
Council of Port-au-Prince (Saint Domingue). He is dead in
Tours during the year 1840. From his marriage, Joseph
Vincent had three children, two sons, Etienne Anatole,
knight of Trobriand, PhilippeRégis,
baron of Trobriand, and a girl Charlotte Rose who
married in 1849 the colonel François-Louis Wogan-Browne,
from the austrian army.

The elder son, Etienne
Anatole, knight of Trobriand, a marine officer, is
dead from the vomito negro in Caracas the 18th
of March 1843, at the age of 24 years. He was in
Venezuela to represent the family at the official funeral
of his cousin, Simon Bolivar.

Joseph Vincent had a
second son, PhilippeRégis de Keredern, Baron of Trobriand, born in Tours the
4th of June 1846.). After a dissipated youth, he
emigrated to the United States and married, in New York
in 1843, Mary Mason Jones, the daughter
of Isaac Jones, President of the Chemical Bank. He took
then the american nationality and, in 1861, espoused,
during the Civil War, the cause of the Union and
commanded, with the rank of Colonel, the 55th New York
Regiment, the so-called Lafayette Guards. Major-General
in 1865, he was integrated in the US Army and served in
the Montana, then, after 1873, in Louisiana where he was
Military Governor. He is the author of a book on the
Civil War entitled "Four Years of Campaign with the
Potomac Army". After his retirement, he lived during
a time in Brest (France) near his daughter Charlotte
Antoinette Beatrice who was the wife of John
Burnett-Stears, a Scotsman who took the french
nationality since he had fighted with the french army
during the War of 1870, as the Captain of an english
volunteer squadron. Back to the States, near his second
daughter Jeanne HélèneMarie Caroline Post
(1845-1926), Regis is dead, in his house of Bay Port
(Long Island NY), the 13th of July 1897. The baron Regis
de Trobriand had two children :

(1)Marie Caroline
Denis de Keredern de Trobriand, born in New York in
1845, dead in 1926. She married successively the two Post
brothers,Albert Kintzing and
Charles Alfred. She had several children, among them
Waldron Kintzing et Régis Henri. Régis Henri Post
has been State Secretary of the Porto Rico Government in
1906, then Governor of the island from April 1907 to
November 1909. He was married with his cousin Marguerite
Denisde Lagarde, grand-daughter of Louis
Pierre Marie Auguste Denis de Lagarde.

(2)Charlotte
Antoinette Béatrice Denis de Keredern de Trobriand,
Countess of Rodellec, knight of the Legion d'Honneur,
born in New York in 1850, dead in Brignogan in 1941. She
married twice, (1°) in 1869, John Burnett-Stears, from
scottish origin, from whom she had five children, (2°)
in 1900, the Count Olivier de Rodellec du Porzic.
After her first marriage with John Burnett-Stears,
Beatrice has been resident in the Leuhan-en-Plabennec
(Finistere) where, from 1882 to 1884, they built the
present estate and his castle.

The first daughter of
Francois Marie the 1st, Louise Jeanne Nicole Arnalde
Denis de Keredern de Trobriand, called Fanny, born in 1775 in
Bréhat, a little island of the northern coast of
Britany, married in 1791 the knight Barthélémy
RégisDervieu du Villars, (1750-1835), captain in the
Regiment of Bresse, then, during the Revolution, general
of the National Guard of Lyon and Mayor of this town. She
passed through the disturbancies of the french Revolution
with her husband, rescuing him, during the Terror in
Lyon, from a death sentence. After Thermidor, they went
back to Paris where Dervieu du Villars was able to
retrieve his wealth. Then, the young and attractive Fanny
rushed in the swirl of feasts whose Paris was the center
during the time of the Directoire while Dervieu du
Villars withdrew from the political life standing aside
from Paris. In 1802, Fanny is the mistress of Eugène
de Beauharnais from whom she got a son, born the 2nd
of February 1803, who, by order of Napoleon Bonaparte,
First Consul, was acknowledged by Pierre
Marie François Denis-Lagarde, redactor of the
newspaper the Publicist and barrister at the Prize Court,
the mother being mentionned, in the act, under the
transparent name of Louise Denis. After
the birth, in 1806, of her third son, Eugene Dervieu du
Villars, Fanny made a journey in Italia, in Venice
particularly, where she has had an intimate relationship
with Denis-Lagarde who was, at this time, Chief of the
Police of the french-ruled Venetia. This relationship
made Eugene de Beauharnais, vice-king of Italia, very
angry and Denis-Lagarde was sent back to France. Fanny
has been during a time Maid of Honour of the Princess
Caroline Murat, queen of Naples. She died probably around
the year 1850.

.

Louise
"Fanny" Denis de Keredern de Trobriand

Miniature
by Francois Meuret (1800-1887)

Fanny gave birth to
five children, of whom only three were legitimous:

1)Auguste Dervieu du
Villars, born in 1797, Captain of cavalry, who
married Marie Hucquet.

(3)Eugène Dervieu
du Villars, born in 1806, Maitre des Requêtes at the
State Council.

(4) Louise
Victoire Santiago, born in 1812, adopted in 1816 by
her uncle "Santiago", alias Jacques
Pierre Romain Denis de Keredern de Trobriand and wife, in
1842, of her cousin Amand Fidèle Jean-Baptiste Denis de
Keredern de Trobriand.

(4) Charles
Dervieu du Villars, born in 1815.

The third son of
Francois Marie the 1st, Jacques Pierre Romain called
"Santiago" Denis de Keredern de Trobriand,
Great Officer of the Legion d'Honneur, was born in
Pleubian (22) the 29th of February 1780. He is dead in
Brest the 24th of September 1867. The details of his
adventurous and glorious life, since the age of nine
years, could be found later in his biographical notice.
He was first married with Charlotte Henriette Hortense
Roussel, and, in 1816, he had adopted his niece Louise
Victoire Santiago de Keredern de Trobriand, born the
9th of November 1812 in Paris, adulterous daughter of his
sister Louise Nicole "Fanny". Later, Louise
Victoire married the 25th of July 1842, her cousin Amand
FidèleDenis de Keredern de Trobriand (born
in 1798 and dead in 1866, the son of Alexandre René
Denis de Keredern de Trobriand and Marie Gabrielle de
Ferrande du Vieux-Marché, from the B branch of the
Keredern family). Louise Victoire and Amand Fidele have
got three sons: Santiago, Adolphe and Amand Denis de
Keredern de Trobriand. The Count Adolphe (1848-1932) was
the grand-father of the present count Gerard Denis de
Keredern de Trobriand, chief of the family. The second
wife of Jacques Pierre Romain has been Helene Anne
Charlotte de Crevoisier de Vomecourt (1775-1869).

Jean
Brichet, Yvonne Brichet, Gérard de Trobriand

Francois Marie the 1st
Denis de Keredern de Trobriand had two other daughters.
Renée Claudine Yvonne Josephe Marie Denis de Keredern de
Trobriand, also called Rose or Rosalie, was born in
Pleubian the 7th of May 1777 and married at first the
general Ange de la Perrière (dead in 1797), then
Michel Ange Gauvin, a US citizen. She had four children
from these two husbands, and, among them, a girl from the
second marriage, Marie Antoinette Claudine Rose
Gauvain, born the 24th of February 1804 and dead
in 1829 who married in 1819 Robert Raymond Harden, also a
US citizen. The last daughter of Francois Marie, Hilarie
Denis de Keredern de Trobriand, born also in
Pleubian, is dead without descendancy..